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Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Resource Kit for ePublishing now ready for the world's classrooms!

After 35 years experience in the field of Education (18 years as a classroom teacher - 5 as staff developer - 7 as citywide Director of Instructional Technology... and 5 as a university-level professor of Education) I am proud to announce the publication of my Resource Kit for ePublishing!

___Resource Kit for ePublishing

Students develop writing skills as they collaboratively produce professional looking publications. The Resource Kit for ePublishing contains everything needed to guide students through the experience of writing and publishing professional looking books or magazines. The kit’s continuum of high motivation writing activities culminate in the production of a class publication. Along the way, students experience everything from identifying a topic of interest, to writing skillfully about it, and finally designing their own ‘e Publications.’ Other than common word processing software that school computers already have, as well as access to the web, no other resources are required. The Kit may be used across grade levels and is particularly appropriate for upper elementary and middle school classes.

Writing is a skill set that represents an important gateway to success in: reading and other literacy competencies, learning across the curriculum - subjects like science and social studies require writing continually, test taking, and the world of work. It is universally regarded as a key skill in thinking and problem solving. Writing, however, remains an area that eludes a great many students. Traditional writing “exercises” often have little positive impact on this area of learning. The Resource Kit for ePublishing, however, uses Publishing, the culminating phase of The Writing Process, as an entry point to offer high motivation, relevant activities that result in the production of class publications that all will be proud to share with peers, parents, the school community… and beyond.The kit illustrates many easy and appropriate ways to upload a class publication to the web. These 'eBooks' and 'eZines' are easy to open and read on any computer and can be presented to parents and audiences by sharing their links, putting them on disc, emailing them, or placing them in a class or school blog or website.

The kit also shows a variety of ways to produce a class book or magazine in hard copy.

With the kit, teachers easily guide students in the creation of eBooks and eZines that are easy to open and read on any computer and can be distributed by email, by easy upload to a class or school website or blog, or to one of the many free, media sharing resources on the web.

The kit contains:• 60 activities for students (upper elementary through middleschool and beyond) 20 Beginner – 20 Intermediate –and 20 Challenging Level activities. Each activity is supportedby 4 items: a) Lesson Plan, b) Student Project Card(explains the project), c) Student’s Planning Sheet, andd) Rubric and Assessment Sheet• A Classroom Management & References resource book withBackground research and information, Curriculum Matrices,Classroom Management and Assessment instructions.• 100 “How-To” Cards for Macintosh users and 100 “How-To” Cardsfor Windows users.The ePublishing Kit will inspire today’s students to learn a challenging set of skills that all must acquire in order to succeed in and beyond school. These include traditional writing skills, technology skills (especially those that support writing) and 21st Century Literacy Skills. The challenge in teaching writing effectively has been compounded in recent years by the emergence of communications technologies, resulting in the need to learn new skills along with traditional ones. As a result, educators have a bigger job than ever in ensuring student success. The kit is a resource to support teachers and learners in meeting this challenge.

@ $299.99 the Resource Kit for ePublishing is a low cost way to introduce an innovative approach to teaching Writing while Integrating Technology into the classroom - Available from the publisher, Teacher Created Materials:http://www.teachercreatedmaterials.com/estore/product/12034Visit the publisher’s website for purchasing details